Short description:

In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life.

At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.

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Long description:

In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers.? Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader?s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life?both individually and collectively.

At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. ?This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology.

"Ultimately, this is a very rewarding text, and one that this reader will be coming back to many times."

--Will Gibson, University College London, in Symbolic Interaction

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Table of Contents:

Foreword

Introduction: Popular Culture as Everyday Life

Phillip Vannini and Dennis D. Waskul

Essays on the Daily Life of Popular Culture

1. Watching Television

Thomas Conroy

2. Watching Reality Television

Tony E. Adams

3. Watching Drug Commercials

Charles Edgley

4. Using Mobile Phones

Christopher J. Schneider

5. Sharing and Waiting on Facebook

Staci Newmahr

6. Reading

Michael Schwalbe

7. Making Video

Phillip Vannini

8. Sharing Selfies

Uschi Klein

9. Playing Music

Simon Gottschalk

10. Seeing Live Music

Emily M. Boyd

11. Playing Games is (Not Always) Fun

J. Patrick Williams

12. Sleeping

Carolyn Ellis

13. Having Sex

Beth Montemurro

14. Going to the Bathroom

Dennis D. Waskul

15. Getting Dressed

John C. Pruit

16. Putting on Makeup

Rebecca F. Plante

17. Drinking Coffee

Pernille S. Stroeback

18. Exercising

Michael Atkinson

19. Kicking Ass

Dale C. Spencer

20. Watching the Super Bowl

Bernard D. Glowinski and Joseph A. Kotarba

21. Home-Making

Karen McCormack

22. Having Pets

Leslie Irvine

23. On Not Driving

Sherryl Kleinman

24. Snow-Gazing

David Redmon

25. Shopping

Keith Berry

26. Trick-or-Treating

William Ryan Force

27. Staying in Hotels

Orvar Löfgren

28. (Not) Smoking

Justin A. Martin

29. Consuming Craft

Michael Ian Borer

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